


it feels like I'm all the way back where I belong

by pastelvampyre



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25996576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelvampyre/pseuds/pastelvampyre
Summary: after merrick, joe and nicky are both suffering in their own ways. but they will heal together, just as they always have done.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 10
Kudos: 167





	it feels like I'm all the way back where I belong

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is @vampyrereblogs. 
> 
> Title comes from the Chantal Kreviazuk song "Feels Like Home".

Everything has to die. Everything has its time. Nothing lives forever. Even immortality is conditional – upon what, they haven’t discovered yet. But one day, they will all die, in their own way and in their own time.

Today, at Merrick’s, it wasn’t their time yet.

The car ride back to safety is uneasy. They drive in silence, processing the days’ events the best they all could, their hearts beating in their throats.

Because, although it wasn’t their time yet, for everyone in the car – except probably Nile, who is too _young_ and too _new_ to be thinking about her time quite yet – it sure as hell felt like it might have been.

At least their hearts are still beating, in their chests or in their throats. They can’t say the same about Merrick.

They were all grievously lucky that today hadn’t been Andy’s time. While Andy’s new mortality had shaken them all to their core, she still sat in this car, breathing. To live another day. Or another year. Or another decade. However long it took for the universe to decide when her time was going to be.

None of them are looking forward to that day.

Joe sits in the passenger’s seat, next to Andy who is at the wheel. He glances back towards the others.

Booker sits, staring at his hands. Or his shoes. His eyes and head remain lowered, refusing to rise and refusing to acknowledge the situation in which they have all found themselves.

Nile stares out the window, her eyes almost a sheet of glass as she stares blankly at the buildings and the trees and the people they pass by. Her mind seems to be wholly elsewhere.

Nicky’s eyes are closed. He is wedged in the backseat between Booker and Nile, with his head leaning back against the headrest. He is wholly still, except for one finger, which taps his leg erratically as if out of his control.

For most, that would mean nothing. But for Joe, who has known and loved this man for nine hundred years, he knows that Nicky is stressed. He knows of the thoughts racing through Nicky’s mind, no matter how many times he tries to slow them down or make them stop.

Joe wants nothing more than to reach back and take Nicky’s hand in his own, to squeeze it and to run his hand over his lover’s knuckles, a gesture of _everything will be ok, I’m right here_.

Nicky opens his eyes, as if he can feel Joe’s gaze upon him. He meets Joe’s eyes for a second which feels like an eternity, seeing the worry and the distress in Joe’s eyes. Worry for him. He forces a small smile to his lips, to tell Joe without words that he’ll be alright, that they will be alright.

He tilts his head back again and closes his eyes. Joe turns back around to focus on the road ahead.

\---

They have another safehouse just outside of London. Back when they found it, a few hundred years past, it was run down and barely holding itself together. But it was abandoned, and far enough away from anything else that they didn’t risk being found, so they didn’t mind.

They don’t love it, but it works. It’s not home, but it works.

And it’s safe.

Or, at least, it used to be. Safety is a strange concept when you’re not used to being found, not used to being hunted. When you live on the fringes of history, being caught right in the middle of it is confusing.

But they’ll figure it out, like they always have.

There are no words being spoken by any of them, the silence thick in the air. It weighs on all of them, sits on their shoulders and lingers in their mind like a bad dream.

Nicky needs to be out of it, just for a moment. Their air feels too thick to even breathe, like the gas in the tower, and it’s filling up his lungs like it’s trying to suffocate him. He needs to get out. So as soon as he steps foot into the safehouse, he walks off. His feet move as if they are possessed, taking him away, to anywhere where he can find relief from the tenseness that surround them all.

He turns and closes the door behind him, heading towards the edge of the bed. Something in him stops, and he turns and locks the door, his hands shaking. Making his way to the edge of the bed, he sits down and lets out a shaky breath.

He clasps his hands together and closes his eyes, forcing himself to breathe in and out. His whole body is restless, crying out to him to scream, to yell, to exhale all the air from his lungs in an effort to be heard. But he doesn’t think he could, even if he wanted to.

What now? What happens now? There’s so much to think about, so much to be done, and it’s overwhelming in a way that nothing ever has been before. He can feel the sharpness through his skin, in his hands, in his torso, a physical reminder that nothing will ever be the same.

For the first time in a long time, Nicky lets himself cry.

\---

There’s a gentle knock on the door, barely audible, but loud enough that Nicky opens his eyes and turns his head towards the door. His heart beats a little faster in his chest until he remembers that it’s locked.

There’s a pause, a moment of silence, and then – “ _Nicolò_.”

It’s Joe. It’s _Yusuf_.

So Nicky stands on shaky legs and walks over to the door to unlock it.

As soon as the door is unlocked, it is gently pushed open and Nicky sees Joe’s face on the other side, through the crack in the doorway that is barely a few inches wide.

“May I come in?” Joe asks, and Nicky wordlessly nods. The door opens more and then closes behind them again as Nicky wraps his arms around Joe, resting his head on his shoulder. Joe’s arms curl around Nicky in return, Joe’s thumb tracing circles over Nicky’s shoulder gracefully.

Together, they lower themselves to the ground until they’re both sitting on the cold wood floor, Nicky nestled in Joe’s embrace.

\---

They stay there for a while, Joe tracing shapes onto Nicky’s back as Nicky silently breathes, in and out, over and over, his head still resting on Joe’s shoulder. They sit in silence, but this time lighter, no longer weighing on them like before. Here, they are both safe. Here, there is nothing that can go wrong. They are together, and they are protected by one another.

Joe is the first to speak.

“I -,” he swallows, “I thought I lost you.”

Nicky raises his head from Joe’s shoulder and presses a kiss to his cheek. As he pulls away, he rests his forehead against Joe’s temple, wordlessly telling him to continue, to say what he needs to say.

“With Andy – her immortality – and then with the gas, and he was on top of you and you died, and you were so still. You were so still, and my heart just sunk. I thought maybe – maybe we were unlucky and –,”

Joe trails off, tears beginning to roll down his cheeks. He’s so broken today, still so afraid, that he can barely get the words out. He can barely vocalize how afraid he was, the terror that shook him to the bone in the time between Nicky’s death and when he woke up again.

“I thought I had lost you for good.”

Joe’s hand rises from Nicky’s back to his head, tracing over where the scar should be. They don’t scar, of course, they just heal when they’re wounded, with no marks on their bodies left to show the pain they went through. All that remains, after each cut and each bullet hole and each death, is the taste of blood in their mouth and a bitter memory.

Joe traces over where Nicky’s scar should be, almost saying with his hands _I’m glad you’re here, I’m glad you’re alive, I’m glad this wound healed over like all the others, I’m glad you’re here, now, in my arms, breathing, alive_.

Nicky raises his head again, and raises his hands to cup Joe’s face. He leans in and presses his lips to Joe’s, gently, and Joe responds back in kind. Their lips, pressed together for the first time since Merrick’s, convey the thousand emotions running through each of their minds.

Nicky pulls back, if only to breathe, and looks into Joe’s eyes.

“I am here, my love.”

\---

As Nicky wipes away Joe’s tears with his fingers, he can’t help but think back to Merrick’s. Standing in the foyer, with Merrick holding a knife covered in Joe’s blood … He reaches his hand out to trace along Joe’s neck. Joe’s eyes turn towards him quizzically.

“What’s wrong?”

Nicky wants to tell him, but the words won’t come to his lips. How he was supposed to be the protector, how he was supposed to be the one protecting Joe, staying in front of him, keeping him safe. And how he couldn’t do that. So he just traces his fingers over Joe’s neck again.

Joe smiles softly, understanding what Nicky is trying to say. Nine hundred years will do that to you, make you able to read each others’ body language so fluidly that they don’t even need to open their mouths to have a conversation.

“It’s okay. There was nothing you could do.”

But that’s the problem. There was nothing he could do, as he watched Joe suffer at the hands of Merrick and that doctor. He had to watch as the love of his life suffered and suffocated and choked on his own vomit as he was tortured, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. He couldn’t help, his hands tied down to the cot in that lab as he had to watch the love of his life die over and over and over again.

He was supposed to protect Joe, and he failed over and over again.

All because of Booker. All because Booker loves to wallow in his own misery, and he had to take everyone down with him. All because Booker wants out. It’s so unfair to the rest of them, that Booker made them suffer because he was suffering. How is that fair? How is that fair to any of them?

“ _Nicolò_.”

He’s shaking, Joe’s shirt balled up in his fists. He didn’t even realize. He relaxes his hands and drops them lifelessly.

“There is time for that, my love. There is time for anger. But it’s not right now.”

Joe wraps his arms around Nicky, placing his hand above his heart. He feels Nicky’s heartbeat through his fingertips, reaffirming that they’re here, they’re safe, they’re together, they’re alive. Everything that they should be.

They have all the time in the world to heal, to process, to recover.

But right now, they have each other.

And that’s enough.


End file.
